[Following is the second installment of anti-Semitism’s early origins, which
Jude posted here in November, 1999, on the eve of the second millennium. He is
on vacation this week. The third, concluding installment will be posted on
Friday.]

Origins of Anti-Semitism II

Earlier this month, I decided to run out in three installments the discussion
of anti-Semitism's early origins in the 11th century. I am relying upon Volume
IV of Will Durant's Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith, published
in 1951. I was surprised after the first installment to get e-mails from
Jewish fellows who wondered why I was doing this. I'm doing it because I think
not many Americans know much about the subject, except the misinformed view
that Jesus was crucified 2000 years ago by the Jews. In fact, Jesus was
a Jew and was crucified under authority of Rome, although he might have been
saved from death if the Jewish Establishment -- the Sanhedrin -- at the time
had decided to side with him instead of withdrawing its support at a crucial
moment. As we learn from Durant, though, Jesus was not without serious support
from ordinary Jews, who were with him in his final hours. There was
anti-Jewish feeling even prior to the spread of Christianity, but it did not
reach serious proportions until the first millennium. Economics was at the
center of this phenomenon, but religion was the excuse. As we approach the
second millennium, there is suddenly a great deal of discussion about
"anti-Semitism," emanating from the Jewish community in the United
States. It is almost as if there is racial memory of how European Jews as a
people were often blamed for economic distress in the Middle Ages, because
they dominated the financial world -- as they do now. This was the result of
prohibitions against charging usurious rates of interest by Christians and
Muslims in that period of history, coupled with prohibitions against Jewish
holdings of land.

The most intense persecution of Jews in history occurred with the Holocaust
more than a half century ago, with origins in the economic distress in Germany
following WWI and the Great Depression. Jews were demonized as being
sub-human. The "final solution" of the Nazis was aimed at wiping
them from the face of the earth. It is useful to go back in time and realize
the idea of a "final solution" goes back a thousand years. In a way,
Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura got me thinking about all this in his recent Playboy
interview, when he took a poke at "organized religion." This
followed attacks on Pope Pius XII by various Jewish political commentators --
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post being the most acerbic -- for
assertions of being sympathetic to Adolf Hitler, perhaps even the "final
solution." As we will see in this excerpt, which picks up where the last
ended, the Popes of the Middle Ages were always trying to save Jews from
persecution, but were overwhelmed by secular forces determined to gain
resources at the expense of Jewish bankers.

* * * *

By Will & Ariel Durant, The Story
of Civilization

There were some lucid intervals in
this madness. Ignoring state and Church laws that forbade it, Christians and
Jews often mingled in friendship, sometimes in marriage, above all in Spain
and southern France. Christian and Jewish scholars collaborated -- Michael
Scot with Anatoli, Dante with Immanuel. Christians made gifts to synagogues;
and in Worms a Jewish park was maintained through a legacy from a Christian
woman. In Lyons the market day was changed from Saturday to Sunday for the
convenience of the Jews. Secular governments, finding the Jews an asset in
commerce and finance, gave them a vacillating protection; and in several
cases where a state restricted the public movements of Jews, or expelled
them from its territory, it was because it could no longer safeguard them
from intolerance and violence.

The attitude of the Church in these matters varied with place and time. In
Italy she protected the Jews as "guardians of the Law" of the Old
Testament, and as living witnesses to the historicity of the Scriptures
and to "the wrath of God." But periodically Church councils, often
with excellent intentions, and seldom with general authority, added to the
tribulations of Jewish life. The Theodosian Code (439), the Council of
Clermont (535), and the Council of Toledo (589) forbade the appointment of
Jews to positions in which they could impose penalties upon Christians. The
council of Orléans (538) ordered Jews to stay indoors in Holy Week,
probably for their protection, and prohibited their employment in any public
office. The Third Council of the Lateran (1179) forbade Christian midwives
or nurses to minister to Jews; and the Council of Béziers (1246) condemned
the employment of Jewish physicians by Christians.

The Council of Avignon (1209) retaliated against Jewish laws of cleanliness
by enjoining "Jews and harlots" from touching bread or fruit
exposed for sale; it renewed Church laws against the hiring of Christian
servants by Jews; and it warned the faithful not to exchange services with
Jews, but to avoid them as a pollution. Several councils declared null the
marriage of a Christian with a Jew. In 1222 a deacon was burned at the stake
for accepting conversion to Judaism and marrying a Jewess. In 1234 a Jewish
widow was refused her dower on the ground that her husband had been
converted to Christianity, thereby voiding their marriage. The Fourth
Council of the Lateran (1215), arguing that "at times through error
Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews or
Saracens with Christian women," ruled "that Jews and Saracens of
both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off
in the eyes of the public from other people through the character of their
dress": after their twelfth year they were to wear a distinctive color
-- the men on their hats or mantles, the women on their veils. This was in
part a retaliation against older and similar laws of Moslems against
Christians and Jews. The character of the badge was determined locally by
state governments or provincial Church councils; ordinarily it was a wheel
or circle of yellow cloth, some three inches in diameter, sewn prominently
upon the clothing. The decree was enforced in England in 1218, in France in
1219, in Hungary in 1279; it was only sporadically carried out in Spain,
Italy, and Germany before the fifteenth century, when Nicholas of Cusa and
San Giovanni da Capistrano campaigned for its full observance. In 1219 the
Jews of Castile threatened to leave the country en masse if the decree
should be enforced, and the ecclesiastical authorities consented to its
revocation. Jewish physicians, scholars, financiers, and travelers were
often exempted from the decree. Its observance declined after the sixteenth
century, and ended with the French Revolution.

By and large, the popes were the most tolerant prelates in Christendom.
Gregory I, though so zealous for the spread of the faith, forbade the
compulsory conversion of Jews, and maintained their rights of Roman
citizenship in lands under his rule. When bishops in Terracina and Palermo
appropriated synagogues for Christian use, Gregory compelled them to make
full restitution. To the bishop of Naples he wrote: "Do not allow the
Jews to be molested in the performance of their services. Let them have full
liberty to observe and keep all their festivals and holydays, as both they
and their fathers have done for so long." Gregory VII urged Christian
rulers to obey conciliar decrees against the appointment of Jews. When
Eugenius III came to Paris in 1145, and went in pomp to the cathedral, which
was then in the Jewish quarter, the Jews sent a delegation to present him
with the Torah, or scroll of the Law; he blessed them, they went home happy,
and the Pope ate a paschal lamb with the king. Alexander III was friendly to
Jews, and employed one to manage his finances. Innocent III led the Fourth
Lateran Council in its demand for a Jewish badge, and laid down the
principle that all Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude because they had
crucified Jesus. In a softer mood he reiterated papal injunctions against
forcible conversions, and added: "No Christian shall do the Jews any
personal injury...or deprive them of their possessions...or disturb them
during the celebration of their festivals...or extort money from them by
threatening to exhume their dead." Gregory IX, founder of the
Inquisition, exempted the Jews from its operation or jurisdiction except
when they tried to Judaize Christians, or attacked Christianity, or reverted
to Judaism after conversion to Christianity; and in 1235 he issued a bull
denouncing mob violence against Jews. Innocent IV (1247) repudiated the
legend of the ritual murder of Christian children by Jews:

Certain of the clergy and princes,
nobles and great lords...have falsely devised godless plans against the
Jews, unjustly depriving them of their property by force, and
appropriating it to themselves; they falsely charge them with dividing
among them on the Passover the heart of a murdered boy....In fact, in
their malice, they ascribe to Jews every murder, wherever it chance to
occur. And on the ground of these and other fabrications, they are filled
with rage against them, rob them...oppress them by starvation,
imprisonment, torture, and other sufferings, sometimes even condemning
them to death; so that the Jews, though living under Christian princes,
are in worse plight than were their ancestors under the Pharaohs. They are
driven to leave in despair the land in which their fathers have dwelt
since the memory of man. Since it is our pleasure that they shall not be
distressed, we ordain that you behave toward them in a friendly and kind
manner. Whenever any unjust attacks upon them come under your notice,
redress their injuries, and do not suffer them to be visited in the future
by similar tribulations.

This noble appeal was widely ignored.
In 1272 Gregory X had to repeat its denunciation of the ritual murder
legend; and to give his words force he ruled that thereafter the testimony
of a Christian against a Jew should not be accepted unless confirmed by a
Jew. The issuance of similar bulls by later popes till 1763 attests both the
humanity of the popes and the persistence of the evil. That the popes were
sincere is indicated by the comparative security of the Jews, and their
relative freedom from persecution, in the Papal States. Expelled from so
many countries at one time or another, they were never expelled from Rome or
from papal Avignon. "Had it not been for the Catholic Church,"
writes a learned Jewish historian, "the Jews would not have survived
the Middle Ages in Christian Europe."

Before the Crusades the active persecution of Jews in medieval Europe was
sporadic. The Byzantine emperors continued for two centuries the oppressive
policies of Justinian toward the Jews. Heraclius (628) banished them from
Jerusalem in retaliation for their aid to Persia, and did all he could to
exterminate them. Leo the Isaurian sought to disprove the rumor that he was
Jewish by a decree (723) giving Byzantine Jews a choice between Christianity
or banishment. Some submitted; some burned themselves to death in their
synagogues rather than yield. Basil I (867-86) resumed the campaign to
enforce baptism upon the Jews; and Constantine VII (912-59) required from
Jews in Christian courts a humiliating form of oath -- more Judaico
-- which continued in use in Europe till the nineteenth century.

When, in 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade, some Christians
thought it desirable to kill the Jews of Europe before proceeding so far to
fight Turks in Jerusalem. Godfrey of Bouillon, having accepted the
leadership of the crusade, announced that he would avenge the blood of Jesus
upon the Jews, and would leave not one of them alive; and his companions
proclaimed their intention to kill all Jews who would not accept
Christianity. A monk further aroused Christian ardor by declaring that an
inscription found on the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem made the conversion of
all Jews a moral obligation of all Christians. The Crusaders planned to move
south along the Rhine, where lay the richest settlements in northern Europe.
The German Jews had played a leading part in the development of Rhenish
commerce, and had behaved with a restraint and piety that had won the
respect of Christian laity and clergy alike. Bishop Rüdiger of Speyer was
on cordial terms with the Jews of his district, and gave them a charter
guaranteeing their autonomy and security. In 1095 the Emperor Henry IV
issued a similar charter for all the Jews of his realm. Upon these peaceful
Jewish congregations the news of the crusade, its proposed route, and the
threats of its leaders, broke with paralyzing terror. The rabbis proclaimed
several days of fasting and prayer.

Arrived at Speyer, the Crusaders dragged eleven Jews into a church, and
ordered them to accept baptism; refusing, the eleven were slain (May 3,
1096). Other Jews of the city took refuge with Bishop Johannsen, who not
only protected them but caused the execution of certain Crusaders who had
shared in the murders at the church. As some Crusaders neared Trier, its
Jews appealed to Bishop Egilbert; he offered protection on condition of
baptism. Most of the Jews consented; but several women killed their children
and threw themselves into the Moselle (June 1, 1096). At Mainz Archbishop
Ruthard hid 1300 Jews in his cellars; Crusaders forced their way in, and
killed 1014; the Bishop was able to save a few by concealing them in the
cathedral (May 27, 1096). Four Mainz Jews accepted baptism, but committed
suicide soon afterward. As the Crusaders approached Cologne, the Christians
hid the Jews in their homes; the mob burned down the Jewish quarter, and
killed the few Jews upon whom they could lay their hands. Bishop Hermann, at
great danger to himself, secretly conveyed the Jews from their Christian
hiding places to Christian homes in the country; the pilgrims discovered the
maneuver, hunted their prey in the villages, and killed every Jew they found
(June, 1096). In two of these villages 200 Jews were slain; in four others
the Jews, surrounded by the mob, killed one another rather than be baptized.
Mothers delivered of infants during these attacks slew them at birth. At
Worms Bishop Allebranches received such of the Jews as he could into his
palace, and saved them; upon the rest the Crusaders fell with the savagery
of anonymity, killing many, and then plundering and burning the homes of the
Jews; here many Jews committed suicide rather than repudiate their faith.
Seven days later a crowd besieged the episcopal residence; the Bishop told
the Jews that he could no longer hold back the mob, and advised them to
accept baptism. The Jews asked to be left alone for a while; when the Bishop
returned he found that nearly all of them had killed one another. The
besiegers broke in and slew the rest; all in all, some 800 Jews died in this
pogrom at Worms (August 20, 1096). Similar scenes occurred at Metz,
Regensburg, and Prague.